S5E9: LinkedIn Tips and Tricks

How is your LinkedIn profile? Today's I talk about some tips and tricks I've experienced with my LinkedIn profile and how it can not only be applicable to students but non-students as well. What else do you need to update on?

Dr.K’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinmm/
Lilly’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eventmethod76

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Transcript

Dr. K:  Hello, Hello, my friends. Welcome back to my podcast channel.

I am actually doing this podcast, it was requested by one of our listeners, one of our fantastic students from another university. I had previously put on our podcast, a resume session, and that has been very widely downloaded and shared. And we've even gotten some call outs from some industry professionals about that excellent advice and input in that session. And I definitely recommend if you have not listened to the resume session to go back and check that out in the podcast that has also inspired today's session, which is on LinkedIn, I get a lot of questions about LinkedIn, how to effectively maximize your LinkedIn, and some tips and tricks. And while I am not a 2,000,000%, LinkedIn expert, I do feel like there's some things that are frequently overlooked or not thought about. And I thought it would be great to answer this listeners questions and and to kind of have a podcast on LinkedIn. So here we go. I have a LinkedIn profile of one of my current students in front of me. And I'm going to kind of go through her page and kind of offer some of the insights and advice and inputs that I would frequently look for if I was looking to hire a recently graduated student, or even a current student for an internship, and kind of just the different things that I look for. 

So the first thing that brings your attention when you're looking at a LinkedIn profile is definitely the profile picture and the cover photo, the cover photo isn't really seen as much if you're on a mobile device, which a lot of people do look at these from a mobile device, but it is looked at very prominently when you're on a computer. So if you're using LinkedIn and you're in job searching, people will most likely look at your profile from a desktop or laptop computer. So put some thought and attention into what you want your cover photo to say about you. And your profile picture. Of course, you want a professional picture smiling, kind of zoomed in a little bit on your head, or at least upper body. Those full body profile pictures are okay, but they're definitely not ideal. And you want to really allow people to see your face and to see your smile. And what you look like. In your cover photo, I get this question a lot is what should my cover photo be? I think that really differs based on industry. If you're in events, you can have it be something event related an event that you worked at, or worked on an event that means a lot to you, it can also be something totally not professional related, though the purpose of LinkedIn is to be your professional platform. And if you are going into travel, it could be travel, it could also be a really cool photo that you've taken. Now, again, this would differ by industry. So if you have a portfolio, you could update that just with a solid black or colored background and have a portfolio link. There's so many different things that you could do for your cover photo to kind of give another pictorial reference for who you are. 

The next thing I really want to talk about is the headline. And for the headline, I have very strong opinions on this. Your headline used to naturally be what your position is. So if you were a front desk supervisor, it said front desk supervisor, and sometimes it would even have the company you're currently at. And what we've really seen over the last couple years is we've seen the headline really going more to the 360 whole person or what you're aspiring to be or a definition of who you are as a person instead of just a position because then people relate you to your position. So in the experience, design event experience realm, we're really seeing a lot of creative things here. So as an example, my headline which is those words, that's right underneath my title, my name, that headline for me, so Event education champion, because I am a champion for event education. And I do that through and through every day in all my organizations, all my past organizations and my current organizations, this student that I'm looking at right now has one, that's just business event strategist.

And I love that because now I get to see, what she would define herself as this is also can be used as a hook to get people to look at your profile. So for example, if I'm on LinkedIn, and I'm searching, I could be searching by name, I could be searching by city, or by a position. And on LinkedIn, it gives you all these search results. And when you actually do the search results, it gives you names and locations, and it gives you that headline. And you don't necessarily want people to naturally relate your yourself as a person with your job title. Because and I tell this to students all the time. I know a lot of students listen to the podcast from different countries and different areas around the world. It's just not just for students. So this works for the industry as well. But particularly for students, you do not want to put student there. Most of my students have an incredible experience, leadership experience management experience that a lot of other people don't even have yet. And yet, you're kind of “downgrading” yourself as a student. There's nothing to be ashamed of, of being a student, being a student is amazing and incredible in such a great experience. But you don't want people to just see you as a student. I tell people all the time, I say I love being a mom. But my wife is not being a mom, a mom is just a part of my life. And it's the same way with being a student. A student is not your life, being a student is something that's a part of your life, and who are you at the core. And that's really what we should be showcasing in that headline. All right. So some people agree with the headline, some people don't agree with the headline, some people prefer to keep it more traditional. And that is okay, that is completely up to you. It's your profile, just so other things to think about. 

Now, there's a category on there, if you are using it or turning it on, there's a category for featured could be recent news articles that you've been in, or videos or even things on a Google Drive that you want to share out with people. This will be right at the top of your profile. I think this is really an underutilized resource. And something that I underutilized myself, definitely, it takes time and effort to go in there and to type things in and to put it on featured, especially if you have things that change a lot. So just think about that. And just remember that feature is something that you can use, if you have a cool piece that's been written about you, you can feature that with a picture with text on it kind of like a blog post, but it's featured on your at the top of your LinkedIn. Then you go to activity, which is pretty self-explanatory things that you like or things that you share. Now you can go under activity and change your preferences so that way it's showing certain things. So say you comment on a post versus if you just emote a post those which could show up differently depending on your settings. There's also a feature under activity, that is if you're a creator. So if you are a content creator, then that activity could look a little different for you because you're constantly posting blog posts through LinkedIn or other contents pieces through LinkedIn. And so just definitely check out the settings to see if those are accurate for the field that you're in. 

Next, we get to the about section, I have strong feelings on the about section. And I'm frequently talking about these with students. Now keep in mind what I say is my own opinion, but it's things that I look for it and I do hire and fire and before I was a professor I hired and fired in the industry. the about page is really our first unless you have things under featured. The about paragraph is really the first thing that we see on your profile that is about you. So you really want to highlight some really cool and awesome things. I kind of think about the about section as a cover letter, that also gets to talk a little bit about personal things as well. It's really things that you are aspiring to and striving for. And some of those cool experiences you've had that maybe don't resonate well throughout the rest of your LinkedIn profile. 

Frequently, what I see under the about profile is I am a student studying this or I am a event planner. And here's my experience. And if I see that I don't even look at the rest of your LinkedIn because you've already given me the summary and it's not even worth scrolling down for you. If you're gonna list out all the jobs you've had, I don't need to go look at your experience. If you're going to say a student, and I'm looking for someone who's more of a professional who has years of experience, I'm just going to click away, which is unfortunate, because a lot of students have great experience. So really think about that about section, you want it to be relatively short. And you want it to read more of like a cover letter, and cool things that don't shine through and other areas, then we get under experience, just I want to back up to about for a second, if you don't feel like you have wrapping up the about me section, if you don't feel like you have good things to say there, if you're really struggling with what to write, the about section is not a required section. the about section is optional. And so for me on my profile, I don't even have one, though I know I should have one. It's just the things that I'm doing are updating so frequently. And I see this, oftentimes as students, students will go in and they'll say, I'm a freshman doing this, and then they never update it. 

So by the time I see it, they're senior, and they haven't updated it. So if you're not committed to updating it frequently, and the things you're putting in, there aren't timeless information, it might be better to just not have an about and that's okay. All right, moving on to experience. First experience, you definitely want to list out your titles and your jobs and how long you've worked there. The biggest questions that I often get mainly from students, so if you're a student think about this is sometimes not all students, especially an internship positions, they're not official titles. So what I see a lot from students or beginning industry professionals, is I see the title is intern. Now, intern doesn't tell you anything. So oftentimes they say, Well, what did you do? And they might have been a marketing assistant or an operations and management, rotational intern. And so oftentimes I tell the students, I say, Well, why can't we write down the things that you actually did? And if it's drastically different than just the title of intern, I'll have the students recharge their manager and say, Hey, I know that my position was winter intern. But since I really focused on marketing on my profile, is it okay if I say marketing assistant, and that just translates a lot better. And in all of my years of offering this input over what is this 2021, over nine years? Ten years? Of offering this input, I've never had an industry professional or manager, tell a student or a beginning industry professional that they couldn't do that? Do you really want to make sure that your title reflects the position that you're doing? Now, keep this in mind as you're going forward. Because if you get an internship next summer, or next year, you want to make sure that you're defining that title to be representative of the things that you're actually doing. Then we get down to the descriptions of experience. Now, my feedback for a lot of people is really about the consistency of the profile. If you have 10 bullet points for one or two jobs, and then absolutely none for others, you want to make sure you have descriptions for all of them, or for none of them. Because then your eye kind of naturally goes and places more importance on the job positions that you have details for. 

So if you have three positions that have that list, you as a supervisor, as a manager, but you have no description, and then six jobs down, you were a nanny, and you have a great giant description on that, then my eyes gonna naturally go to that. So really keep this in mind and think about it. I would definitely recommend to add some description under each one, but make that description super relevant to you and what you did there. Anybody could say for wedding coordinator, ensure the wedding is running smoothly. Anybody could say that. But what did you do? 

This is times that you can add in quantitative information. You can say throughout my tenure here. I personally ran his day of coordinator 21 different weddings. I ran events that ranged from 400 people to 1200 people, I ran events that were $100,000 to a million dollars. This is really that time where you get to add those numbers truly quantify what you did in that position. And that's what makes it unique and special. Oftentimes, when I sit down with students, for resumes, I get asked this a lot. I'll sit down and I'll just I'll put their resume to the side, put their LinkedIn to the side and I'll just start asking asking students questions and industry professionals who I'm helping for typically former students. I'm asked, and I'll just start asking questions of well, what was the greatest thing that you feel like you've done here? or What was your biggest challenge? Like what made you want to go home and cry? 

Because obviously, if it impacted you that much, there was a lesson learned there. And if that was a huge lesson that you learned, that's something you want to feature on your, your resume and your LinkedIn, these are cool things. So really make sure that those descriptions are specific. I think often we go to Google and we Google, like, what are the job descriptions of a wedding coordinator, and we copy and paste, or even, we'll go to the job duties, my favorite dot dot dot other duties as assigned, you get it if you get it, and if you don't, you just don't get it by, we go into the job duties, and then we copy and paste them. And that's not truly descriptive of what you did and what you accomplished. So really try to think about how you can quantify that, then we get down to education. And this is a really great place to put your degree. But things that I frequently tell students or former students, one, I would never put your GPA on there. I know that as students, we're really proud of our GPA. But most of the time the people in the industry don't care. And if they do care, it's for very specific reasons are very specific scholarships. But it doesn't need to be publicly stated. If you're anything less than a 4.0, you're just showing you're not a 4.0. And then if you are for 4.0, then people will think that your bookie or academic with no real world experience, so honestly, it's just better to leave your GPA off of there. Another thing to think about, especially for younger professionals, students or former students, I give a recommendation, that's not one that you're going to hear very often, and you're not going to read it in a book. ageism is really a thing in our industry. You're either too young, or you're too old. I remember distinctly, I was getting my first million dollar contract as an event planner, and I was getting my first million dollar contract, and I was 26. And there's automatically thoughts that go with that. Am I going to really trust a 26 year old with my million dollar event. And so one thing that I did early, I had lots of really great leadership and management experience early on. And people oftentimes said like, you're a manager, you're a leader. So I was often leading people that were older, I just decided to not give away my age, and say, Haha, yeah, I know, I'm so short. Or I have great skin cream, but I'm older than I appear. And a big part of that was removing the years from my education. So if you were to go to my LinkedIn, and I encourage all of you, I'll post my LinkedIn in the show notes, and you can click through and then just add me while you're on there, tell me that you heard the episode, I'd love to connect with you. If you go under my education, you'll see that all of my education except for my PhD. All of my education has no years on it. Because what happens is people do reverse analysis. So I'll sit there and be like, okay, you graduated high school in this year, or you got your bachelor's degree in this year. And they'll come up with kind of an estimate of your age. And this actually hurts people when they get too old, too, because then they'll sit there and be like, Oh, you're 50, you're not going to be able to stand on your feet for 16 hours a day, you're not going to be able to have that vitality that you need in in this area. And so that ageism can really impact you there as well. 

So my PhD I chose to leave my dates on because people get PhDs throughout all phases of life from when they're 25, all the way up until they're 60. So I left that one on there. But all my other ones I removed my years. Oh, my goodness, we're already at 19 minutes. This is crazy. All right. And then definitely I recommend depending on your certifications, or your volunteer experience, all of those additional things that you can add on their skills and endorsements used to be super, super popular back in the day, they've kind of faded off in my personal opinion. But it is always great to be able to add some recommendations on there. definitely ask people for those recommendations. And any accomplishments you can put on there relevant coursework, relevant organizations, all of those are going to make your profile stand out. So that's a lot of information for your LinkedIn. But I hope that you found it helpful. And I want to hear from you. So reach out on LinkedIn, send me a message let me know if you have specific questions. I am happy to spend a couple minutes on my next product. Past just going over some additional questions that have been sent in to me and always happy to look at your profile and to give any insights or inputs on that. It's one thing that I actually do for my senior events students as they're about to go out into the world is just update and revise based on your current thing. I actually do it every year on my birthday I have a list of my annual things like annual doctor's appointment and annual this annual that and this is one of those is annual Google searching myself though now I do that quarterly. But annual Google searching myself and then annual update my LinkedIn. So all great tips and input. I hope you found this podcast beneficial. definitely make sure to Like and Share, Subscribe. Definitely anybody you think that would be interested in this, feel free to send it their way and reach out to me on LinkedIn. Let me know what you thought about it. With that, thank you so much for taking the time to make the time I will talk with you soon.